Space Future has been on something of a hiatus of late. With the concept of Space Tourism steadily increasing in acceptance, and the advances of commercial space, much of our purpose could be said to be achieved. But this industry is still nascent, and there's much to do. So...watch this space.

Space has been much in the news lately, particularly with the death of astronaut
Sally Ride. But how much do you really know about the “final (some would say “next) frontier?” Take this quiz and find out.

Space Future’s own Carol Pinchefsky has won the 2012 NewSpace Journalism Award, given by the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF). She will be accepting the award in person at their gala in Santa Clara, California, on July 28, 2012.

China, a country with over 4500 years of recorded history, gave the world, gunpowder, paper, compasses, movable type, and even the seismological detector. Now China has one more bullet point to its list of achievements: It’s the third country to have docked two spacecraft in orbit.

Criticizing the Space Shuttle is like punching America in the face. After all, it’s been a symbol of national pride for thirty years. But many of my friends and I are celebrating yesterday’s piggy-backed final flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum…because a museum is where the shuttle belongs.

Are you a high school teacher of science, technology, engineering, or math? Do you like space? Do you know that, with the advent of private space companies, NASA won’t be the only way to get there? If so, there’s a workshop just for you…and 139 others just like you.

Space is a dirty place. Over 16,000 pieces of debris over 10 cm wide have been left behind since Sputnik took to the skies in 1957. And now the Swiss want to do something about it. Scientists with the Swiss Space Center at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, are developing a “janitor” satellite, known as CleanSpace One, to make space tidier.

When Richard Garriot de Cayeux, the founder of the Ultima series of computer games and the world’s sixth space tourist, went to the
International Space Station (
ISS) in 2008, he didn’t just kick back and bask in zero gravity. No, during his twelve-day journey he conducted experiments on the crystallization of protein molecules, took photographs, conducted an art show (really) and…made a horror movie.